During our bicentennial year, about 43 million visits were made by clients to beauty shops in the United States. A substantial number of these visits involved changing the color of the client's hair.
Thus, the coloring of hair is an important volume business, and it is estimated that the hair dye industry grosses 280 million dollars a year.
While it is relatively easy to change the color of the hair, as a whole, by dyeing to make it darker, or by bleaching to lighten it, the result of only dyeing or only bleaching may be disappointing. The hair so treated tends to have an uninteresting uniform color. It is customary to follow dyeing or bleaching operation with another step, in which selected strands of hair are further treated so that their color will change and so that these selected strands will stand out against the background provided by the remainder of the hair. Similarly, selected strands of hair of a person's natural hair can be treated.
Treatment of selected strands of hair to change the color is called streaking if the selected strands are lightened, or reverse streaking if they are darkened. Other terms such as frosting and tipping are related and will be discussed below. Streaking can produce an appearance similar to that of highlights glistening on the hair, and is much desired. Reverse streaking can give an appearance of texture to dull hair. It can also be used when the client wishes to return to her or his own natural shade. In this case, as the roots grow out, the previously bleached hair can be reverse streaked to make less apparent the difference between the different portions of hair.
The task of coloring selected strands of hair is difficult for the hair stylist, since many strands of hair all over the head must be individually treated with appropriate treating material, while guarding the general mass of hair from contact with the treating material, and it is arduous for the client because of the length of time involved.
Indeed, in the frosting cap method, the procedure is actually painful to the client. In this method the hair is first combed, then covered with a thin film of plastic and finally covered with a heavy rubber cap, which is provided with a large number of small holes. The hair stylist uses a smooth crochet hook to punch through the plastic film at each hole in the rubber cap, snares the hair which lies underneath the hole and fishes it out with the hook. Considerable force must be used to fish out the selected strands of hair because of the adjacency of other strands, and the confinement of the plastic film and rubber cap. After the selected strands are pulled out and exposed, outside of the rubber cap, they are treated with treating material, which is kept from reacting the scalp and the remaining hair by the tight fit of the rubber cap and plastic film.
The frosting cap method is popular and has certain advantages. There is no contact of the scalp with the chemicals used, and the treated hair is well segregated from the hair which is not to be treated. However, besides the painful aspects mentioned above, there is much breakage of hair, the hair stylist has limited control of which particular strands of hair are pulled out, and the rubber cap must stay in place for the wearisome time of up to an hour.
Another method, the "Dixie Cup" method, utilizes cups. Selected strands of hair are pulled through a small hole in the bottom of the cup into the interior thereof, the selected strands are then treated and packed into the cup. The method permits greater contol by the hair stylist of the choice of which particular strands of hair are to be treated than does the frosting cap method. However the size of the cups dictates that the different treated strands must be widely spaced, which is a disadvantage. This method is time consuming since each cup must be individually handled. It is difficult to manipulate short hair into the cup. The Dixie Cup method has not gained great popularity.
In the foil method of coloring hair, the hair stylist isolates a strand of hair from the remaining hair, and lays it over a piece of foil which is butted up against the scalp, adjacent the roots of the isolated strand. The isolated strand is then treated with treating material and the foil is folded around it to act as a barrier against migration of the treating material. It is difficult for the hair stylist using this method to follow the progress of the treatment since the hair being treated is hidden. When streaking, some of the hair is sometimes overbleached.
Another method is the weaving comb method. Considering the manipulations required of the hair stylist, this method is closest in approach to, although distinct from, the instant invention.
The weaving comb method is well described in American Hairdresser Salon Owner, Volume 100, Number 3, March 1977, at page 76. Note particularly illustration 10. Briefly, the method uses a weaving comb, which has gullets of two depths between its teeth. When the comb is used, it acts like the headles of a loom to separate the hair being combed into an upper and a lower flight, with a shed between, and with the upper flight flowing through the comb adjacent the spine of the comb and the lower flight flowing through the comb closer to the tips of the teeth. Treating material is placed on the spine of the comb, adjacent the teeth. When the hair is then combed with the weaving comb, some of the treating material transfers to the hair shafts of the upper flight while the hair shafts of the lower flight are not touched by the treating material because of the separation provided by the shed. This method has the advantage of applying the treating material to the hair being combed during a single stroke of the weaving comb. However, considerable time is taken to prepare a parting of hair for the weaving comb, and the comb must be reloaded with treating material for each stroke.
The instant invention differs from the other methods of selectively applying treating material in that much less handling of the hair is required, as will be seen from the following synopsis:
The hair is initially divided into partings and each parting is sequentially treated. If desired, partings can be isolated from other partings by barrier material. There may be, typically, about twenty partings. Each parting is combed out into a laminar sheaf, as defined above. A special coloring comb is run through the laminer sheaf only once, to deposit the treating material in a controlled manner on spaced selected hair shafts of the outer face of said laminer sheaf, while the intercalated hair shafts of the outer face of said sheaf are not treated. The special coloring comb is so constructed as to clearly delineate the treated areas from the intercalated untreated areas.
The just described treatment of one parting proceeds, seratim, in a systematic manner, as determined by the desired style, usually from the nape upward. If desired, each parting, when treated, may be separated with barrier material so that treating material does not transfer between adjacent partings.
Because the handling of each parting involves only three steps, namely conventional combing, one stroke with the special dispensing comb, and optional barrier application, each parting can be handled in less than a minute, and the entire head of hair can be treated in about twenty minutes. This compares very favorably with the amount of time required of the hair stylist by other methods.